The crowd, two dozen or so people, gathers outside the door of the storage unit.

Each gets a chance at a peek inside, revealing a couple of computer monitors, a lamp, a vacuum, a few other odds and ends - and stacks of boxes.

What's in those boxes is anyone's guess, but some in the crowd are eager to find out as they bid on the contents of the storage unit. The bidding goes quickly. In less than a minute, the winning bid of $250 has emerged.

The door to the unit is shut and locked. The crowd moves on to another unit.

This was the scene at a recent storage auction. When the rent on a storage unit goes unpaid, the belongings in that unit may be auctioned off - an effort by the owner of the storage facility to collect at least some revenue from those who default on their bills.

It's used as a last resort, said Shannon Schur, president and CEO of Colorado Springs-based Schur Success Auction Services. But it's an option that seems to be on the increase as storage bills go unpaid during the recession.

"It's across all economic strata," said Richard Schur, Shannon's husband and an auctioneer with Schur Success. "Lower-income people aren't the only ones defaulting. It's just anybody."

Chris Longly, a spokesman for the National Auctioneers Association, said the group doesn't track storage auctions. But, he said, any auctioneer who specializes in that field "is going to tell you they're seeing an increase in business. And that's just a sign of the economy."

Storage auctions are just one niche for Schur Success, but it's a growing one. It sold the contents of more than 900 units in the Springs and elsewhere in 2007 and nearly 1,250 in 2008, and this year is off to another record pace, Shannon Schur said.

The tough times seem to be leading not only to more auctions, but more bidders at those auctions. "We have seen in the past eight months a flurry of new buyers," Richard Schur said.

The tricky part for those buyers, though, is they often don't know what they're buying.

Bidders are allowed a quick look into a unit, but they can't go inside. They can't open boxes or shove them aside to see if anything is hiding behind them.

"Until it's sold, it's not ours," Richard Schur said. "It still belongs to the tenant. So we don't want anybody going into the unit rifling through things."

One recent auction in town included everything from a unit holding a Ford F-150 truck to another with mostly empty shelving. More commonly, the units were crammed with boxes that could contain either treasure or trash - or both. Some prospective buyers brought heavy-duty spotlights, trying to illuminate every corner.

It's that treasure hunt aspect that draws some buyers and sends others away, Richard Schur said.

"We hear both the positive and the negative," he said. We've heard the ‘I spent $35 on that unit and it was filled with garbage.' And I've heard the ‘I spend $200 on a unit and found $500 worth of coins just in the first drawer that I opened up.'"

One buyer years ago in Denver found a Harley-Davidson motorcycle hidden in the back of the unit, Richard Schur said. Another time, a winning $5 bid on a unit with a single cardboard box yielded a new digital camera.

Many of "the first-time, ‘I'm going to get rich, I'm going to buy a unit for 5 bucks and make a million' folks" are never heard from again after spending too much for too little, he said. More reliable are what he calls the professional buyers.

"This is how they make their living. Some of them sell on eBay, some Craigslist, some are resellers and have secondhand shops."

Dennis "Rock" Michalski has been attending local storage auctions for nearly six years. He sells some items he acquires at Rock Reliable, a small store he operates on the west side of town, but makes most of his money selling on eBay, he said.

"I look for the knickknacks, boxes marked fragile, things of that nature," he said.

He's found treasures such as 1908 pieces of Van Briggle pottery. And he's spent money on a unit full of neatly stacked boxes that turned out to be empty - "just a lot of packing boxes."

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NO EASY RICHES

Payment at a storage auction is typically cash only. "Buyers need to be prepared to pay $200 or $300 for a decent unit," said Richard Schur of Schur Success Auction Services.

No cherry-picking

You can't pick and choose items from a unit; you buy all the contents of that unit. Buyers usually have 24 hours to clear it out, so factor in the possible cost of hiring labor to help move everything and dumping contents that are of no value, Schur said.

Clues to unit's value

There are clues that can help decide how much to bid, Schur said.

"You're looking for how neatly the personal property has been cared for. Is it stacked, is it in boxes, or has it been thrown in piles? The items that you do see, do they look well-taken-care-of?"

Buyer beware

Look, he said, for things with specific resale value, such as tools, electronics and furniture.

"You're also looking for the negative things, which could be like old, stained mattresses, broken pieces of furniture, anything that's going to cause you to spend money to get rid of it."

The Gazette